Architecture writer Lynn Becker has compiled a list for the Chicago Reader of the “10 most important things” in Chicago architecture in 2006.
Among his picks: John Ronan’s Comer Youth Center in the Grand Crossing neighborhood; Douglas Garofalo’s transformation of an army PX into the Hyde Park Arts Center; Construction on Block 37 (optimistic?); the Chicago Architectural Club’s Learning from North Lawndale exhibition and associated competition, which called for designs aimed at revitalizing the neighborhood; the Louis Sullivan 150th anniversary celebrations; the 2016 Olympics; and last but not least, Jeanne Gang‘s Aqua. “[It] is the largest commission ever landed by a woman architect; it could also mark the moment when – in the best tradition of Sullivan, Root, Burnham and Mies – Chicago’s most ambitious buildings were put back into the hands of its most talented architects.”